When I leave my PC on without using it for a few hours, sometimes when I go back
to it, it displays a blank screen (which is my normal screensaver) and
won't respond to the keyboard or the mouse. The only thing I can do is
to turn it off and back on again. When it starts up again, it
immediately runs scandisk because it wasn't shut down correctly.
I've checked the power scheme which is set to always on and 'System
Standby' and 'Turn off hard disks' are both set to never.
I am still using Windows 98 but the problem only started since I've
had a new hard disk installed and upgraded to Windows 98 SE. |
Request for Question Clarification by
landog-ga
on
29 Jul 2005 01:16 PDT
Hi
When you say "upgraded to Windows 98 SE" - did you format and perform
a fresh install of Win98SE? Or perform an upgrade on top of your old
Win98?
It's most likely a driver issue. One possible 'sledgehammer' solution
would be a complete format and reinstall of Win98SE, making sure you
have the most up to date drivers for all of your hardware on floppies
or CDs.
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Request for Question Clarification by
sublime1-ga
on
29 Jul 2005 01:44 PDT
buddy...
What happens if you set your screensaver to "none"?
Does the PC still freeze up in that case?
sublime1-ga
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Clarification of Question by
buddy010203-ga
on
29 Jul 2005 02:08 PDT
The upgrade was a complete reinstall of the OS together with a new
hard disk but this was done by a repair shop, so maybe they did a
reinstall of Windows 98 and then upgraded it to SE. Is there any way
of checking for out of date drivers? Am loath to do a complete
reinstall without an understanding of how this would fix the problem
(if it would).
Haven't tried screensaver 'none'. Wouldn't this risk burning out the
monitor? Is there any reason to think this would fix the problem?
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Request for Question Clarification by
sublime1-ga
on
29 Jul 2005 15:46 PDT
buddy...
I don't know if you will have noticed Hammer-ga's comment,
so I'll repeat it here - newer monitors are much less
likely to be affected by burn out - screensavers are not
really necessary to serve this function as they were in
the past. Besides, we're only doing this as a test for
a short time, to see if the PC will freeze when you have
no screensaver active. Turning the monitor off with the
power switch is certainly an option as well, but not
really necessary for the duration of this experiment.
If you know the brand and model of your video card, it's
certainly possible to do a search for the latest drivers.
sublime1-ga
|
Clarification of Question by
buddy010203-ga
on
30 Jul 2005 04:56 PDT
Hi everybody and many thanks for the feedback so far.
Part of the problem is that the freezing is intermittent, so it's very
hard to tell whether a change has fixed the problem. Yesterday it
happened twice in the daytime then I left it on overnight and in the
morning it was fine.
I checked out the advanced display as recommended by landog. Clicking
advanced gave me an applet headed NVidia RIVA 128/128ZX Properties:
Manufacturer: NVidia
Features: DirectDraw 1.00
Software version: 4.0
Current files: nv3disp.drv,*vdd,nv3.vxd,NV3DD32.DLL
When I clicked 'Change' and followed the instrustions, after step 4, I
got an applet back that said: Updated Driver Warning: The driver that
you have chosen was not written specifically for the selected hardware
and may not work correctly. Installing this driver is not recommended.
Are you sure you want to use this driver?
I get the same when I pick NVidia in step 4 in the Manufacturers box.
Clicking'Show compatible hardware' gives me 'Models: NVidia RIVA
128/128ZX [2/1/1999].
I didn't proceed with the change.
I'll try changing the screensaver as has been suggested and turing the
monitor off with the powerswitch and see what happens. Someone has
suggested screensaver: none, others something with a bit of movement.
Will try the latter firtst.
Do you recommend playing around with the drivers as well? I think I
prefer trying out one thing at a time but can be persuaded if
rationale is convincing.
Thanks again.
Mike
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Request for Question Clarification by
sublime1-ga
on
30 Jul 2005 12:51 PDT
buddy...
I recently had a similar problem, off and on, for months.
I'd wake up to a frozen screen, even with no screensaver
running, and I'd experience occasional freezes in normal
usage. In later months, I started hearing the hard drive
spin down as Windows was opening. It would spin down
briefly, and then spin up again, but the system would
freeze thereafter. Sometimes it would spin down only once
and freeze - other times it would do this up to 3 times
before eventually freezing. Rarely, it booted without
freezing.
I researched the problem several times, but never found
anything relevant. I also use a free program called
Motherboard Monitor which monitors system voltages, fan
speeds and temperatures, and noticed that my +5V level
was low - about 4.58V average, and even lower during
heavy activity. I began to suspect the low voltage was
a problem. The power supply was rated at + or - 5%, so
it should never drop below 4.75V.
Finally, after more research, I located a single post
in which someone described the exact same problem -
hard drive spin down during boot and low +5V values
measured with Motherboard Monitor (MBM). He'd even
logged the voltages during a game which froze and
was able to correlate the low voltage with the freeze
and the unfreeze to the return of higher voltage. He
reported having upgraded to a new power supply with
a bit more wattage rating. This solved the problem.
MBM showed higher, stable +5V values and spindowns
ceased. He even had the same power supply that I did!
So I decided to replace my power supply and see what
happened. My +5V supply with the new one is 4.87V
and no more spindowns or freezes.
Since I was replacing the PS, I decided to have a
look inside. Now the Antec PS I had has 2 fans, all
by itself. One pulls air into the PS from inside the
case, and the other exhausts it out the back. I don't
know if you've ever opened up your PC case, but in
the space of a year, they can accumulate enough dust
to choke your CPU fan and make the CPU heat sink, on
which the fan rests, unrecognizable. So most of us
geeks open the case every few months and vacuum it
out (very carefully!). The power supply warranty,
however, is void if you open it, so naturally, you
don't. Well, if the dust inside the PC was bad, you
can imagine what the inside of the power supply
looked like, not having been cleaned in 3 years!
It looked like the inside of the cannister on a
used vacuum! These weren't dust bunnies - they
were dust COWS!
Since you're using Windows 98, I'm betting you also
have an older PC, with an equally old power supply.
If you want to see if your motherboard is among the
thousands capable of being monitored by MBM, you
can download it here and check your voltages:
http://mbm.livewiredev.com/
Here's a page where you can check your motherboard
to see if it's covered by MBM:
http://mbm.livewiredev.com/mobolist.html
If your board isn't among those listed, perhaps you
have some other means to check your voltages, like
a good old-fashioned multimeter. I'd be willing to
bet that your +5V supply voltage is below tolerance.
Let me know where this takes you...
sublime1-ga
|
Clarification of Question by
buddy010203-ga
on
31 Jul 2005 01:20 PDT
Thanks Sublime. I changed the screensaver to 3D letters (which move
around) and left it overnight and this morning the pc was still
active. I don't understand why this should help but I'll leave it this
way for a few days and see whether the problem recurrs. If it does,
I'll try out some of the more technical solutions.
Thanks again.
|
Request for Question Clarification by
sublime1-ga
on
05 Aug 2005 17:46 PDT
buddy...
So do you consider that you've received an adequate answer
here? I didn't want to post in the official answer space
until I knew I'd gotten you somewhere. Is that the case?
sublime1-ga
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Clarification of Question by
buddy010203-ga
on
06 Aug 2005 00:02 PDT
I've left the screensaver as something that moves and the pc hasn't
frozen for about a week now, so, yes, I think I've had a very adequate
answer. If the problem starts again sometime, there are a lot of
options to follow up.
I think Landog suggested using a moving screensaver. I haven't used
this service before so I'm not completely sure how this works. I'm
grateful for all the suggestions and would certainly use the service
again.
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Request for Question Clarification by
landog-ga
on
06 Aug 2005 11:46 PDT
Hmm...
So who gets credit?
Any ideas? Sublime?
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